Dead Gecko

This morning as I walked into the class room of 3b to teach agriculture I find most of my students all crowed to the left side of the class squealing and jumping up and down. This is never a good sign…I am immediately rushed by 3 or 4 students telling something about someone killing a gecko.

I think great my favorite thing to deal with (for those of you that don’t know I cannot stand bugs, snakes or lizards of any kind. Though I have gotten better about this fear since living here in Honduras…more on this later though). So I walk over and tell them to get to their seat…quite a few of the desks have been moved around in the ruckus of killing the gecko though. One of my boys starts kicking the dead gecko. I am totally disgusted by this but try to hold in my utter disquietedness in fear that they will then turn on me with the gecko.

I eventually have to go stand by the gecko to keep the kids from kicking at it. Estefany volunteers to get the broom and I agree to let her go because I have not better idea of what to do with the dead gecko. We eventually get the thing out of the class after much squealing and laughing form my students. Once we are rid of the distraction I ask them why they felt the need to kill it. I explained to them that geckos are harmless creatures and next time they should just let it be. I was just glad to have the experience over with.

Now for a cockroach story. It’s nothing too exciting…but last night I woke up in need of the bathroom. I always hate waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom cause it is almost always a sure thing that I will find at least one cockroach. The only uncertain thing is the size I will find. Sometimes they are massive and other times they are just tiny things…but not matter what the size it is never fun to deal with at 2 in the morning.

I always get such an adrenalin rush when I see one of these disgusting creatures. First of all they always seem to freeze and point their creepy little antennas in my direction. And I am 100% certain that they can sense my fear and half the time they seem to run straight for me…knowing that will totally freak me out and is their best option of escape. Well last night was no different. I grabbed the closest flip flop I could find and took a wild swing (standing as far from it as I could, knowing that at any moment it would attack) only to miss and have it run at me and head straight into my bedroom. I was not too excited knowing it was in there but at least now I could go to the bathroom in peace.

Heber the schools PE teacher was in a motorcycle accident yesterday. Julio and I went to visit him after school today. Nothing to crazy like broken bones or anything but he does have a swollen knee the size of a grapefruit and a few scratches. The school has been pretty crazy this week. Now with Heber gone, the other 6th grade teacher out cause she is pregnant and has been sick, and Denis the main counselor of the school out all week cause he has been sick, and a few other people have been MIA a few times this week as well it’s made for an interesting week.

Oh some more great news…tomorrow is Valentine’s day and the school has committed to this music performance tomorrow night…well the thing was this vocal group was supposed to come only to have them pull out at the last minute and by last minute I mean yesterday. So now us missionaries have been asked to sing a few songs…funny thing is it’s not even that surprising to us anymore.One more story for the day…kind of a culture shock moment…or more just a thing about this culture that continues to anger and frustrate me.

Today as I was eating lunch outside as I always do…and I see one of my student Coto walking and set his banana peel on the ground…I look at him and say ¨are you serious¨ (luckily I think he missed this part) I then tell him to ¨pick it up¨. He does only to walk about 5 feet and drop it by a plant. He looks at me and I get up and say ¨do I need to take you to the trash can¨…so I do and I open the lid and let him drop it in…then he runs off to play…I was too frustrated with him to even say anything else. I walk back to the table my table where Karen is sitting and has just seen this all play out…and we vented about how frustrated we are with our students and how they seriously think they can get away with things like this all the time.

Mark asked me how it was going today and I said ¨it’s been crazy but I love life¨…and its true...life is crazy…but I love it! As much as I hate it here I love it and I would not want to trade this experience for anything.